John at the Zoo 



25 



JOHN AT THE ZOO. 



There are three young lions, which a keeper told me are 

 just one year old, their eye teeth are much smaller than those 

 of the old lions, so I suppose they have not yet changed their 

 milk teeth. I noticed that they are all faintly spotted like 

 leopards, and in some places, especially about the shoulders, 

 streaked like a tiger, neither spots nor streaks are to be seen 

 on their backs. My father told me that many young animals 

 show markings on the skin which fade out as they get older. 

 4 ' They prove," he said, "that the animals are really related 

 to those which they imitate, and you may take these markings 

 as proof that lions, tigers, and leopards are descended from 

 the same stock." I went to the older lions, and looking care- 

 fully I could detect in them' some traces of the spots and 

 streaks. They had not entirely worn out. 



Observing a leopard crunching a bone I realised better 

 than ever before the use of the carnassial teeth, the animal put 

 the bones far back in his mouth so as to bring them between 

 his big sharp-pointed grinders, and here crunched them. I 

 shall remember in future that the carnassial molars are for 

 cracking up bone, and that the canines are not used for that 

 purpose. The canines are for seizing prey and for tearing it, 

 but not for chewing it. The carnassials are equivalent, as 

 bone-crackers, to our grinders as nut-crackers. 



The Chimpanzee has very high ridges above its eye 

 sockets, they amount to crests. My father called them 

 " supra-orbital ridges," and said that they made it easy to 

 distinguish the skull of a Chimpanzee from one belonging 

 either to the Gorilla or an Ourang-outang. They give a 

 curious flat appearance to the upper half of the animal's face. 



There is now in the Antelope's shed an animal not so big as 



